Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.
 
And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.

(Clearly brought to by Professor Obvious of the Faculty of Well Duh)

Highly analytical couples, such as scientists, may be more likely to produce children with autism, an expert has argued.
[...]
Other research has found both mothers and fathers of children with autism score highly on a questionnaire measuring autistic traits.

Well, I hd to go and mention the Bangles in my previous entry, and now I'm listening to a variety of music, much of it from the 80s.

And I've come to a startling realization...

I actually like 80s music. I always thought I just sort of knew a lot of it and liked some of it, but that for the most part I was a 70s kinda gal. And I do really like 70s music (most of it; I don't like a lot of the disco stuff), but dang, I really do like 80s stuff. Big hair bands (hey, I'd still have Jon Bon Jovi's babies... except that he's happily married and has plenty of babies of his own already, but that's not the point, I'm trying to refer to the thing you do to GET the babies, really, nudge wink), Bangles, the Eurythmics, Duran Duran (the band so nice they named it twice, although I do actually know where the name came from and for the record I could probably break the orgasmatron, too, but if you don't know where the name "Duran Duran" comes from that comment will be totally lost on you, so I suggest you go and rent "Barbarella" right away, it's a hoot).

It's actually kinda scary. Right as I type this I'm actually listening to (and enjoying) "Too Sexy" (you know, I'm too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts...). I even sometimes sing this song (with slightly altered lyrics) when I'm happy and feeling very proud of myself. And I sing it to Missycat (I'm too sexy for my cat, poor pussy, poor pussy cat).

So there you go. The Eagles may well be my favorite band of all time (and they are), but it seems that I actually do like 80s stuff, too... Don't worry. Be happy. Hey, I give you my phone number. When you worry, you call me. I make you happy!

Not the 80s band (although I quite like them). The jewellery items. Specifically solid carved gemstone bangles. I got a shipment today that had several bangles in it, including jade and amber, but also a rose quartz one.

As luck would have it, I've been looking for a bracelet for myself for a while. I wanted something that wouldn't interfere with operating the mouse and that I could wear pretty much all the time unless I specifically wanted to take it off. I considered a silver chain bracelet, and then saw a really pretty amber bangle bracelet that I bid on on eBay (but the seller got their account yanked, apparently permanently!). So the rose quartz actually suits what I've been looking for. It's a subtle color, a very soft translucent pink, it doesn't bother me when I use the mouse or type, and it's completely made of, well, rock (quartz is rock, after all!), so it won't tarnish or anything, and I can shower in it, etc.

It's a good thing I like it, though, because I can't really get it off. That's one of the problems with solid rock bangle bracelets, you see... they can be a real pain to put on or take off. I got this on, but getting off was another matter. And I have fairly small hands (I can reach inside a can of Pringles Potato Chips!), so I figured if I tried to sell it, I could end up with a very unhappy customer, and I don't want that. Since I was looking for a bracelet anyway, I decided to keep this one.

Andrew said he should get a scarf to tie to it and chain me to my desk (I told him that's entirely unnecessry). And then, of course, there are other things I suppose he could tie me to, but.... err, that's probably a bit too much information, eh?

So anyway, now I have this new bracelet, and it's nice. Good thing I like it, because I can't get the bloody thing off...

First of all, I"m about 99% sure this is a scam. The IP address from which it was sent is in Ontario, the email address they gave is on yahoo.co.uk and they claim to have a store in Texas. Uh-huh.

It was sent through the Priscilla's Pen site, which has only some personal inspirational materials that I wrote and wanted to share. There is nothing for sale there at all. I certainly don't sell Bibles (and even if I did, I wouldn't sell KJV Bibles, becuse it's just not my favorite translation and while it's nice and poetic and traditional, it's not really my cup of tea as far as Bible translations go).

ANYway. Here's the message:

Dear Sir/Madam,
I'm Mrs Larry From
Houston,Texas.I will Like to Order Some
kjb Bible From your Store To Our Store
In Houston.
But,before We proceed We will like
to know if you do Handle Shipment to
Texas and also If you Accept Credit
Card Account As a Mode of Payment...
Kindly Get Back to Us Now with Details
Thanks
Regards
Mrs Larry.
We await for your Response Now....

Now you tell me what they're up to. They want me to process a credit card for them. Riiiiight. And even if I had Bibles to sell, I wouldn't sell them to random strangers on the net who have a Canadian IP address, a British email address, and claim to have a store in Texas! I just wonder how stupid these people actually are. And I hope that there aren't any honest people who are stupid enough to fall for it.

Morons. If you're gonna try to scam someone, at least pick your targets correctly. You shouldn't try to scam a woman who is 1) exceptionally cynical 2) isn't selling what you think you want to buy 3) has been on the net since 1993 and has seen it all and 4) owns the server and can block your IP address.

I'm all alone. Kids went out with grandparents and/or father (different kids went with different people). Everyone's out, except me. I'm all alone.

WOOHOO!

I feel like dancing in my underpants or something. (Don't worry, though, I won't leap up and down on a sofa afterward, and yes, it's a somewhat obscure reference and if you don't get it, don't worry about it.)

I love being alone. Not all the time, but I'm basically a very solitary creature and I love having time all to myself. Being alone was the one thing I really loved about living by myself.

So, anyway, here I am, wearing Armai Sensi (oh, come on, you knew I had to mention perfume or jewellery somewhere in here, didn't you?) and with NO television and NO noise other than the hum of the hard drive, with a nice cup of tea (Earl Grey, of course), doing inventory, but, oh, the solitude is just lovely.

Mmmmmm. Quiet...

Okay, I'm actually still giggling. Honestly. Best Blonde Joke Ever. (Warning: Based on some reactions I've seen, I suspect it takes a particular sort of twisted sense of humor to really enjoy the joke.)

I have written previously about Melbourne's infamously changing weather. The joke is "four seasons in one day" (although, really, Melbourne only has three seasons, as there's nothing I'd personally refer to as winter, although Melburnians seem to think that there is). We also sometimes get patches of some other season in the middle of the season we're supposed to be having.

You can never "put away" your seasonal clothes in Melbourne. You just never know when you're going to need a jumper (sweater) or a pair of shorts...

Anyway, this past week has been very Melburnian weather, indeed. It was very hot, then it was quite cool (I'd say cold at night, although not so cold that I needed a hot water bottle or anything; I did have to put on a jumper - see above - and wear warm slippers around the house for a couple of those days), then it got hot again yesterday, and I do mean HOT, but with a really big downpour in the evening. Today it's quite warm but not terribly hot and it's a bit humid, which is unusual for Melbourne (the humidity, not the warmth). Tomorrow's forecst appears to be for rain and thunderstorms, and it'll be a bit cooler (but still warm).

You know, I just realized how extremely boring my life must be for me to be blogging about the weather... Eeek.

Okay, maybe it's just me, but I love Google ads. I love the stuff they pick to put on particular pages. Sometimes it's REALLY funny, such as the time I was looking for a recipe and the ad told me I could get "new and used ground beef" on eBay (yummy!). This blog frequently had ads for stuff to do with chronic fatigue and LOTS of stuff for/about web design and/or blogging. Now, I see, it's got jewellery links! LOL! I wonder how long before it starts showing perfume ads....

(Can't believe I'm doing this, but what the hell.)

I thought some readers might be interested in a new Australian online auction site I recently joined (and at which I'm selling). It's called OZtion, and it's well worth checking out.

OZtion at a glance:

* Launched in January 2005
* 2nd largest consumer-to-consumer online auction site in Australia
* Over 14,000 members and 40,000 listings
* Email, Credit card and Address Verification
* No listing fees and low sales fees (1.5% - 3%)
* Melbourne based with live person support

Please include my User Number on the registration page if you join OZtion (I get a credit for that, heh). My User Number is: 14887 and my userid is uncommontouch.

(If nothing else, the link on this page will get archived and will increase rankings for the site, right? But it is worth checking out!)

The Motion Picture Assn. of America, the leader in the global fight against movie piracy, is being accused of unlawfully making a bootleg copy of a documentary that takes a critical look at the MPAA's film ratings system.

I've been doing business with a new wholesaler, one in Thailand (beautiful silver jewellery, although I mostly bought chip gem bead stuff this time around). They've been extremely polite and flexible with me (such as halving their usual required first order amount!), and their prices are just excellent (I hope other people find the jewellery I've ordered as nice as I think it is!).

Anyway, here's the funny bit I wanted to share, from an email exchange with the service rep I've been working with:

"I anticipate that you will be satisfy with our product and well selling."

So far, I'm certainly satisfy with their well selling!

Oh. My. Deity.

I got a shipment of perfume today. A couple of the items were for me (well, why on earth not?). Dior's "j'adore". Oh. My. Deity.

I tried some the other night and was extremely impressed by it, which is why I bought some to sell (and some for myself at wholesale prices, hehe). Now, I'm wearing a base of perfumed cream with Eau de Parfum on top of that. I've had it on for about half an hour an the initial top notes have mellowed and oh my deity. This is GOOD. It's got this fantastic gardenia type note that's just intoxicating (almost literally). I think I'm getting aroused or something. Wow.

This is the most luscious fragrance I've ever personally experienced. I'm serious! I like perfume, yeah, but normally I don't enthuse like a fool over them. But this... Oh. My. Deity. J'adore Dior j'adore!

I don't know if I'd wear this every day, as it doesn't seem to be an everyday sort of fragrance to me (Elizabeth Arden Sunflowers fits that bill, and, to a lesser extent, Lancome Tresor, which I still love), because j'adore is just so very... indulgent, I guess. Now I understand why they use a picture of a golden woman in a pool of liquid gold for the advertising. It's strangely appropriate (and much nicer than the Calvin Klein ads with all the blank expressions and boys with puffy lips and Kate Moss).

So, hey, if you're in the market for a new fragrance, try j'adore next time you're in a store that sells it. I can highly recommend it. And, since it was winner of the 29th Annual “FiFi” 2001 Awards for U.S. Women’s Fragrance Star of the Year, it would seem that I'm not alone in my opinion of the stuff.

When I was a kid, I wanted my name to be Veronica. No reason, really, other than I thought it was a cool name and I was a fan of Archie comics (I still read them from time to time, as a matter of fact).

I think most little girls have a "fantasy name". When I had Miranda, a friend said, "Oh, that was the name I wanted as a kid!" and I know of one girl who wanted to be Tracey, and another who wanted to be Tiffany.

I don't think boys do this. No boy (or man) I've ever talked to about it had any idea what I was talking about, but I'll bet that at least half of the female persons reading this blog entry will understand...

My current fantasy name, by the way, is Bathsheba. You know, the babe who ended up married to a king because she took a bath? (It's in the Bible, look it up, it's a heck of a story!) Yeah, Bathsheba... I'd be a great Bathsheba. Better than a Veronica, anyway.

Oh, crap. Now I have that song by The Veronicas in my head. It's a cool song, but... ack...

So Andrew decided that to "help" me with my jewellery business, he'd do some study of gems. Not jewellery, but the physics and chemistry of the actual stones. Because he's a geek, that's why.

I'm not entirely sure how this is necessarily going to help, but you never know, and if he enjoys learning this stuff, it's cool with me.

So yesterday I got a new shipment and one of the rings is a tanzanite ring. I showed it to him and asked if he could guess what the stone is, knowing he couldn't, but what the heck (tanzanite, by the way, is a nice blue-purple, not a red-purple like an amethyst, but a sort of cornflower or periwinkle color).

He looked at the ring and said, "No, I don't know, but it's certainly an Aluminium Silicate crystal," and handed it back to me.

And you know what? He was right.

Now won't that make a nice listing ad? "Lovely Aluminium Silicate Crystal Ring in 10k White Gold". They'll be lining up around the block... Well.... actually, it might get them at least looking at the listing, even if it's only out of sheer curiosity...

I'm in love. I know I said I love Lancombe Tresór, and I do, but tonight I tried a sample of j'adore by Christian Dior. WOW. It's very expensive, but it's absolutely incredible. I'm very impressed by it, and normally I don't go nuts for perfume. I can still smell it (I got a nice good spray of it on my arm) and it's just heavenly. I adore j'adore...

So naturally I had to go buy some of it wholesale. Mostly to sell. But some for me (well, why not, at wholesale prices?).

I also got back one of my rings from the jeweller. It's a channel set ring and it lost one of the stones (eek!) so I had to take it and get it repaired. It was surprisingly affordable to fix, and the workmanship is just excellent, and the ring looks incredible now! Very clean and shining and the gold has been polished. Just WOW. This ring didn't look this good when it was brand new!

So now I have a favorite jeweller, based on the quality of the work he did on this. He's Italian, and the jeweller shop is a small family concern (although it's part of a confederation of jewellers, apparently), and I like to give my business to small businesses whenever I can, so there you go.

New perfume, new jeweller. Now I just need a new car and a new motherboard and a new processor and some new memory.... (I'll keep the husband; I've found that changing them too often is a pain in the neck.)

I always used to tell Andrew that when we had enough disposable income, I wanted to buy nice jewellery and expensive perfume.

I find it richly entertaining that I'm now buying nice jewellery and expensive perfume for the actual purpose of acquiring more disposable income.

Go figure.

So I'm researching wholesale perfumes. I love perfume, know a fair bit about it, and there's a pretty good profit to be made in it (at least, with some perfumes), so I thought I'd look into selling it.

I'm finding it to be much less straight forward than the jewellery. Oi vey.

I've got some good leads, but the prices seem to vary so much, and there are sellers of perfume on eBay who sell for outrageously low prices, I can't figure out how they do it. I've finally concluded that any of the following are true, in any combination: 1) the perfume is counterfeit 2) they started bidding too low and aren't really making a profit at all 3) they've got some supplier that sells for insanely low prices, which leads back to point one, in that perhaps it's counterfeit.

Anyway, if anyone wants to get me some perfume, I'm very much into Lancombe's Tresór. It's pretty expensive, though, so unless you get counterfeit (which I'd rather not have, as nobody knows what the hell they put in that stuff!), you'd have to love me very, very much, hehehehe.... Okay, if you really want to buy me perfume and can't afford the high end stuff (not many of my friends can, and, uh, neither can I, really, unless I find a super good deal somewhere or get it as a gift), you can get me Revlon's Charlie. Blue. The original. Not red or some other color. Oh, and I really like Bonne Belle "Body Musk" but it's damned hard to find! So, hey, you can send me cheap perfume if you want.

Or, uhm, just buy something from me and I'll buy my own. *insert a winking smiley face here, and please know that most of this post is tongue-in-cheek and the ramblings of a perfume-saturated brain, and not actually a public plea for expensive or not-so-expensive perfume*

Firemen in a small Japanese town were left red-faced after a party to mark the end of a fire awareness promotional event ended in a blaze that badly damaged their station.

I've just found out to my shock and horror that the company that makes the bras I wear (i.e., the ONLY bras I wear) is closing. The owner apparently wants to go on and do other things, which I can respect, but why on earth isn't she selling the company? It's got to be awfully profitible...

Anyway, I'm seriously bummed out. I've been wearing these bras since I came to Australia, and I'm so hooked on them I won't buy anything else. Partly, it's hard to find bras in my size, and partly, they're just damned good bras.

I'm really quite upset by this. Bleah. I'll have to buy up a bunch of them before the company closes (phone orders get 30% off).

Damn. I feel a combination of anger (how dare they stop making my bras?!) and sorrow and puzzlement (why isn't she selling the company and its assets?!) and annoyance and understanding that sometimes you just need a change in your life. But damn. What am I gonna put my boobs in now?!

A small ISP in the town of Clinton, Iowa, has just won one of the largest payouts ever extracted from a spammer.

Well, I had a crappy day yesterday, as I wrote. It turned into a crappy night. We got pizza for dinner and then I was working at the computer and started to get a stomach ache and after about an hour and a half, I was throwing up. Ugh. I throw up very infrequently, but when I do it's very painful, very thorough, and very exhausting.

I went to bed after that because I was really tired and I felt like I was freezing (it wasn't that cold, but I was shivering). Had to get a hot water bottle and everything. Andrew came to bed after a while and then, at around four in the morning, Miranda woke up sobbing because she threw up. She was up and down for a couple hours after that. Poor kid kept saying, "I don't want to throw up any more!" Can't say I blame her.

I slept most of the morning and got up for a couple hours to eat some soup (which was a relief; last night I couldn't even drink water without my stomach going crazy!) and then I went back to bed.

Now, in the early evening, I"m feeling better. Not good, but better. Stiff all over, probably from lying in the bed so much. Headache, but I took some pain reliever and that's tolerable now. I had some more soup and some Coke (yeah, yeah, I know, but i needed the caffeine for the headache, I'm an addict). I feel well enough to sit at the computer a little bit and catch up on a few things (not for long, though, I don't think).

I'm the third member of the family to have this. Andrew's Mum was first, then his Dad. Now me and Miranda. We don't know if Zoë and Andrew will get it, but if they do, well, it comes on pretty quickly, not much warning, so we'll just have to see.

Bleah. Crappy day, crappy night. At least I know that this thing only lasts a day or so. I should feel better tomorrow. I hope...

Having a fairly crappy day so far. Had to go out with BOTH kids to do some earrands and it's been frustrating and annoying ever since. I did get my packages mailed, bought some padded envelopes in bulk for a big discount, and took one of my rings to the jeweler to be repaired (it lost a stone, but thankfully, it was only a cubic zirconia, so it won't be too expensive to replace it).

I also, however, went to get money out of an ATM and walked away WITHOUT the cash (I did get my card, though). I've never done such a thing in my entire life, and I hope to heaven I never do it again, because I feel REALLY stupid now. I mean, how dumb is that?! In my own defence I can say that I was severely distracted by the two children who were bickering constantly and driving me insane, but that's not really an excuse, and it's not much of a defence, either. Thankfully, it wasn't very much money, and I'm just going to pretend that I spent it on digital 3D content that I'll never use (heaven knows I've spent enough money on precisely that in the past).

And then later, I stopped to get myself a bottle of water and Zoë managed to completely tip over the trolley (shopping cart) she was sitting in. She wasn't hurt at all, thankfully, and I swear I only stepped away for thirty seconds, and I only stepped about two metres away, if that, but Zoë is like that. You can't turn your back on her for a second, and I turned my back, and over she went. No damage, no harm, just a great deal of upset, embarassment, and, I think, a bit of resignment on my part that my day was going to suck.

Got some take-away for lunch, came home, had a meal, went to take some photographs of new jewelery stock I got in the post today, camera ran out of battery. Put some freshly charged batteries in and got the old ones to recharge them and.... can't find the recharger. *siiiigh*

This is really not my day. I need more caffeine. Or some Valium (I have some, actually; I take it only very, very rarely because I like it and I think it would be far too easy to get addicted to it). Or maybe some Bailey's Irish Cream and milk on ice.... Hmmmm........

Well, it's jewellery or jewelry, depending on if I'm feeling American or Commonwealth. Anyway, I've been doing fairly well with it, so far. I've got a number of items that haven't sold, but that's all right. I'm finding that selling on eBay is like fishing. Sometimes you get a good catch, sometimes not so good. Sometimes you get nibbles that lead nowhere, sometimes you get a sudden strike that totally surprises you. Happily for me, I like fishing (yes, I do, which probably comes as a surprise to a lot of people), and selling jewelery (or jewellery) is much more lucrative than sitting on the bank with a radio and a rod in your hands, although the latter is tastier in the short run (but with good profits from sales, I can buy all the fresh fish I want, hehe).

Anyway, this looks like it's going to become an ongoing thing, and a full-time business for me. This is a good thing. I enjoy doing it. I'm also getting much better at taking photographs of the items (I love photography, of course, so that's a nice bonus).

I'm going to continue doing book covers because, frankly, I love doing them. I love the company I work for, I love my editor, I love seeing my artwork on a book, I just love it. So I'm not stopping in the forseeable future.

The Alicorna web design site will remain pretty much "as is". If I can be bothered to make any new linkware templates, I'll share them there, and if I ever make any more "for sale" templates... I'll probably sell them on eBay and just link from the Alicorna site because, well, I'm already an established eBay seller and setting up a shopping cart is a pain in the neck (been there, done that, ugh).

Oh, yes, and I'm still going to be signing a contract to moderate/maintain a particular website, but that's a pretty low-demand type job, sort of a spare time thing, strictly part time. Just a few uploads now and then, checking on things like user logins, helping people figure out how the site works, etc. I've been doing it for free (it's an autism site, that's why I did it for free), and now they're willing to pay me for it, so, hey, I'm happy to do it.

So. 2006 is looking pretty interesting, and potentially lucrative. This is a Good Thing™. And if you want nice jewellery for a good price, hey, let me know and I'll see what I can do for you... *insert a winking smiley face here*